A CHRISTMAS CAROL
My favorite part:
Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good [...]

Read Full Post »

WHAT I’M LISTENING TO: “All I Want for Christmas is You,” Olivia Olson, “Love Actually” soundtrack. I don’t care what anyone says. I just love this movie (especially the wedding sequence with “All You Need is Love”):
I don’t want a lot for ChristmasThere is just one thing I needI don’t care about the presentsUnderneath the [...]

Read Full Post »

SHARING
Now, here’s a class act:
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Christopher Reeve played a superhero in the movies, and now, two months after his death, he’s a superhero to a 14-year-old boy.
Tyler Howard of Charlestown is a quadriplegic and has been in a wheelchair for 10 years. On Thursday, Reeve’s family gave Howard the late actor’s specially [...]

Read Full Post »

A SMALL SLIP
Interesting quote today from Rumsfeld on CNN:
DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: And to change that way of living, would strike at the very essence of our country.
And I think all of us have a sense if we imagine the kind of world we would face if the people who bombed the mess [...]

Read Full Post »

NPR = NEVER PROVOKE REPUBLICANS
Via Duncan, I find that NPR has censored David Sedaris’s traditional reading of “The Santaland Diaries“, removing the passage about his flirtation with a male elf:
The overall cutest elf is a fellow from Queens named Snowball. Snowball tends to ham it up with the children, sometime literally tumbling down the path [...]

Read Full Post »

DRUNKEN RAVINGS
No, Virginia, there is no liberal attack on Christmas. Mr. O’Reilly was simply hitting the eggnog again.

Read Full Post »

From one of the few credible voices left in journalism, commenting in a story on what media people consider to be the story of the year:
Geneva Overholser, the Curtis B. Hurley Chair in public affairs reporting, Missouri School of Journalism, Washington bureau

“This was the year when it finally became unmistakably clear that objectivity has outlived [...]

Read Full Post »

WHAT I’M LISTENING TO: “Tornado,” Susie Madrak.
This rather claustrophobic song was inspired by a major storm some years back, when I was trapped inside my apartment with no power. I told myself it could be worse - I could be trapped there with my ex-husband.
The finger of the gods Moved through our town todayPicked [...]

Read Full Post »

NO PEACE ON EARTH
Andrew Greeley:
There is an irony in the promise of a prolonged war. The Vulcans believed that, as the world’s only superpower, the military might of the United States was overwhelming, irresistible, beyond challenge. In fact, the war into which they tricked us has become a quagmire, 130,000 American troops are at the [...]

Read Full Post »

MY CANADIAN BEST FRIEND
I just called my Canadian drugstore and my Allegra (which is not even a prescription medicine there) just went up from $96 for a three-month supply to $138!
“Wow, that’s a big increase,” I told Nigel, my customer service rep. (Isn’t that cute, that they really do have names like Nigel and Colin?)
“It’s [...]

Read Full Post »

REACHING OUT ACROSS THE AISLE
It’s Friday, and you know what that means, boys and girls - the Bush administration tries to fly something under the radar. And here it is:
WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - President Bush said Thursday that when the new Congress convenes next month he will renominate 12 candidates to the federal appeals courts [...]

Read Full Post »

A CHRISTMAS CAROL, PART I
Having a little trouble getting the spirit? From the pen of great writer and humanitarian Charles Dickens:
“Don’t be cross, uncle,” said the nephew.
“What else can I be,” returned the uncle, “when I live in such a world of fools as this Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas. What’s Christmas time [...]

Read Full Post »

LIBERATION FOLLIES
Just another way we’re winning hearts and minds in Iraq:
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq is suffering a shortage of state-supplied wheat, sugar and rice because of logistics and security problems,officials and traders say.
Most Iraqis, already in the grip of a fuel and electricity crisis, have depended on monthly rations since the Saddam Hussein era under [...]

Read Full Post »

MOVE ON
Hey, you lost. Get over it.

Read Full Post »

NO NO NO
Vermont electors are asking their senator and congressman to refuse to certify the presidental vote:
Dec. 15 (EIRNS)–VERMONT ELECTORS DENOUNCE UNCONSTITUTIONAL RESTRICTION OF RIGHT TO VOTE; CALL FOR CONGRESS TO TAKE UP VALIDITY OF OHIO VOTE. The following resolution is in the process of adoption by the three certified electors of the state of [...]

Read Full Post »

JUST SAY NO
Tim Roemer, who’s now the Establishment anti-Dean favorite to head the DNC, was one of only 20 House Democrats who voted in favor of Social Security privatization in 2001.
Not acceptable to real Democrats. [Via Kos.]

Read Full Post »

KERRY TO FILE SUIT FOR OHIO RECOUNT
The suit wasn’t filed today because a snowstorm closed the courthouse. Kerry lawyers intend to file tomorrow instead:
2004 Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry will file today, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, papers in support of the Green Party/Libertarian Party recount effort. Specifically, [...]

Read Full Post »

“I Drove All Night,” Cyndi Lauper, “Twelve Deadly Cyns”:
What in this worldKeeps us from tearing apartNo matter where I go, I hearThe beating of your heartI think about youWhen the night is cold and darkNo one can move meThe way that you doNothing erases the feeling between me and you
I drove all night to [...]

Read Full Post »

FOREST, TREES, ETC.
From Broadcasting & Cable:
An executive from one NEP-member organization is still fuming over the exit polling, and is alarmed by how few repercussions there have been for what amounted to a journalistic near-disaster.
He thinks bloggers were scapegoated and the problem really lies with exit pollers Mitofsky International and Edison Media Research. He points [...]

Read Full Post »

This is from the MediaChannel.org newsletter. The link is broken, but I wanted to share:
I am not sure how many readers from outside New York know the name Jimmy Breslin, the dean of all newspaper columnists here in Gotham. He’s a writer’s writer, a populist with a pen and a tongue that has slayed many [...]

Read Full Post »

LAST MINUTE GIFT SUGGESTION
I’m reading Larry Beinhart’s “The Librarian,” and damn, for a book that purports to be a plain old thriller, how the hell does this guy know so much about the Republican guard?
It’s the perfect gift for the Bush hater in your life.
By the way, he’s also the author of “American Hero,” the [...]

Read Full Post »

AMEN
Today’s horoscope:
talk about a split head first of all you’ve got the fact that you’re not supposed to say christmas any more then you’ve got christmas capricorn saturn retrograde jupiter in libra you’re supposed to feel jolly YOU DON’T
You’re up but you’re down you’re down but you’re up
this is probably one of the [...]

Read Full Post »

HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS
Travis says: Let the impeachments begin.
Not sure why Publius stops at the Pentagon. The SecDef works for the President. At Intel Dump, Phil Carter wonders when the cascading reports of prisoner abuse will end, and why the administration doesn’t just come clean with the whole dirty business. Phil surprises me. He’s a [...]

Read Full Post »

WHY STOP AT RUMSFELD?
Kos:
More soldiers are killed. 1,320 Americans, 74 Britons, seven Bulgarians, one Dane, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Hungarian, 19 Italians, one Latvian, 16 Poles, one Salvadoran, three Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and nine Ukrainians. The wounded number in the five figures.
Nevermind the innocent Iraqis who have been “liberated” to death. [...]

Read Full Post »

Hmmm. New Senate minority leader Harry Reid isn’t as boring as I thought:
And here’s another story from Reid’s tenure as chairman of the gaming commission: A man named Jack Gordon, who later married LaToya Jackson, tried to give Reid a $12,000 bribe. Reid let the FBI videotape Gordon offering him the bribe, and then, according [...]

Read Full Post »

THE PARTY OF DISPOSABLE SOLDIERS
From Salon:
To some military analysts, the fact that a suicide bomber could wreak so much damage inside a heavily fortified Army base suggests that the Iraqi occupation has sunk to a new level of chaos. The war in many parts of Iraq, they say, is apparently so out of control that [...]

Read Full Post »

SO MUCH WINDOW DRESSING
Wait, would this be the same Muammar Gaddafi whose “conversion” to our ways was so proudly trumpeted by the Boy King as proof of the strategic worth of his Iraqi invasion?
SAUDI ARABIA recalled its ambassador from Tripoli yesterday and ordered Libya’s envoy to leave Riyadh after allegations of a plot to assassinate [...]

Read Full Post »

OPEN HOUSE
Thoughtful piece on efforts by the United Church of Christ to run its ad campaign, weaving in the difference between literal and metaphorical Christianity:
Network executives were quick to hint that the UCC staged all this for publicity — but it was the networks that rejected the ad, causing far more controversy than the ad [...]

Read Full Post »

WEIRD
Is it just me, or is this truly obscene? I wouldn’t do this with my own child, let alone a cat.

Read Full Post »

WAR CRIMES
WashPo editorial today entitled “War Crimes“:
The Bush administration refused to release these records to the human rights groups under the Freedom of Information Act until it was ordered to do so by a judge. Now it has responded to their publication with bland promises by spokesmen that any wrongdoing will be investigated. The record [...]

Read Full Post »